It feels great to have a new gay play around the West End. It also feels slightly odd as there’s been very few for the last decade or so. Recently directors wanting to explore the gay experience have had to dredge up old AIDS plays, now painfully out of date and only good for an impotent wallow in ancient miseries.According to my research the reason why there’s so few gay plays set here and now seems to be that the new generation of queer playwrights are more liberated thanks to the progress that’s been made in civil rights. They no longer feel the need to ghettoise their work with a label and have moved on to tackle broader subjects.
It’s up to my generation then to keep putting our lives on stage and the inevitable consequence of us getting older is the characters will get older too. What once was a genre that exclusively explored the experience of hot young guys will increasingly dramatise the dilemma of growing older in a culture that only prizes youth and beauty.
Russell T Davies has led this shift to exploring an older experience with his shrill but enjoyable TV Series Cucumber. In TOLD LOOK YOUNGER veteran radio playwright Stephen Wyatt brings the subject to the stage in a play that refreshingly barely mentions AIDS.
Instead three old friends, who came out together at university, attempt to reunite over three dinners, years later and discuss their attitude to relationships. Central to the discussion is how the age of our lovers and the nature of our sex lives define who we are and dictates our happiness.
On the surface they’re a rather unlikeable trio. Robin Hooper plays the bumbling and insipid Oliver who gains in confidence through the piece. Michael Garner plays the insufferably loud and attention seeking Jeremy who it’s hard to believe would inspire friendship in anyone and Christopher Hunter is the self obcessed, blinkered Colin who talks in a smug sing-song voice that makes everything sound like he’s speaking in inverted commas.
However I easily recognised traits of my own friendship with my two BFFs with whom I also have dinner once or twice a year when we love and frustrate each other in equal measure.
Simon Haines gets to steal every scene playing a series of different bolshie and/or irritating waiters and designer Bob Bailey and lighting designer Charlie Lucas also cleverly mark the changes in the restaurant over the years.
A thoughtful and thought provoking 90 minutes of theatre in a tiny venue just off Piccadilly Circus.
This play feels very of the moment. If you’re into your HBO contemporary TV dramas like the Sopranos, Entourage, The Wire - anything with American men yelling f*ck at each other and using ugly threats of violence to express their affection - this is the play for you.